The only sport I had known. Everyone I had known always spoke about it.
Dad, Brother, Uncles, Aunt, Friends and anyone I had known. We played it on the streets with rubber ball, tennis ball, rubber cork ball, cork ball and finally proper cricket ball. We played it every day on the heat and dust of Indian summer. We used all forms of handmade bats and stumps till we had enough money to buy proper kit.

We discussed endlessly about it. We discussed, argued, fought and made friends and enemies. We saved all those bubble gum wrappers for months and sent it in exchange for a simple cricket poster.

I was a sky customer for the past 7 years. In fact I still am. I am a customer for their all-in-one package (satellite Television (including premium sports channels), land-line phone and broadband internet). Altogether I pay about £80 a month.

I was paying £80 a month for the past 7 years. I’ve moved to a new home about 6 months ago and haven taken sky with me. Ever since I moved home, my internet connection started becoming poor. During evenings, it was intermittently losing connections. I’ve tried fixing the issue by calling sky helpline several times and they gave several options and none of them worked for me.

Let us say, you have $16,992 on your bank account. You want to use $1500 of your money to buy a new computer. Now, your bank does not let you take your money today. Worse, you cannot have it for 30 more days. Your bank tells you to send a 30 day advance notice to get your money. It also insists on a 7 day reminder before you can have your money in hand.

It is your money. And you cannot have it when you want it. How terrible would you feel? Well, that’s how several small business owners feel when they cannot get their money from their customers without sending many reminders.

Business failure is something that has always been dramatized by movies and novels. There is either a sinking ship that takes down diamonds with it, or a million-dollar pharmaceutical company facing a major blow because of fake/outdated drugs.

Failure of a business does not always happen amidst such drama. True, there have been such incidents – they are always referred to because they are popular. But there are other factors that contribute to the failure or at least the “slow progress” of a business. They are not as big as a sinking ship. And it’s only these smaller factors that are more common among small businesses and startups.

This should rather be called gambling right? No wait. It is more like buying a lottery ticket.

Yes, people purchase lottery tickets with the small hope of making big money by giving very little. Nothing wrong with that; if you win you win big and if you lose you lose very little. It makes perfect sense.

But what would you call a business owner who buys a lottery ticket with everything he has got? His money, his time, his family, his experience, his pride, his everything.

You would call him stupid. But business owners don’t generally come under the stupid category.

Today, social media marketing is a lucrative industry. It’s new, exciting, and dynamic. But is it as effective as it should be?

That’s something to think about. A lot of businesses have jumped into the social media bandwagon without really knowing why they did. This attitude of “going with the wave” has caused us to forget the very basic rules without which success with social media is quite hard to obtain.

That is why there is now a need to pause and think about what we are doing. And fall back on these two very basic rules.

Have you ever broken a promise you made to a child? Recall the expression he/she had when you didn’t bring with you the yellow bicycle or the golden unicorn with the pink hair? All those tantrums and the sulking can be the worst to deal with. Each time it happens you swear not to repeat it. Then you begin thinking of ways to make up and you know that you have to outdo yourself.

Here is when you decide to buy that expensive doll house or the limited edition action figure of the Transformers. Undoubtedly this act receives the desired effect.